Having observed the way in which the partnership concept is made available to organisations’ internal communications about their interorganisational relations, the way that different systems of communication collide in the development of outsourcing and contracts across the public and private sector will now be discussed.

The starting point is a distinction between organisational systems and function systems.

Organisations are defined as social systems that communicate through decisions. They are in a certain sense decision-making machines that create themselves through decisions and consist therefore of nothing but decisions and decision premises. Organisational systems are fundamentally exclusive; you are excluded from the organisation unless the organisation decides to include you through the assignment of membership.

Function systems are defined as social systems that are based in society and are functionally closed around themselves through the use of specific media. Function systems are systems such as, for example, the political system, the legal system, the economic system, the religious system, the arts system and the mass media system. These are all characterised by communicating in each of their symbolically generalised media; the economic system of communication forms money as a medium, the political system forms media as a medium and the mass media system forms information as a medium.

The communication media are referred to as symbolic because they are concentrated around a few clear symbols. In the economic system of communication, the medium is money and the symbols coins and notes.

Furthermore, symbolically generated media are general in the sense that the medium can be employed to communicate about anything. It is not tied to specific situations. For example, anything that can be symbolised through money can be communicated about economically.

Finally, all symbolically generalised media establish binary codes for communication. Binary codes divide all communication into plus and minus values. The positive values define a fundamental striving or motive in the communication, although they do not specify the motive. The negative value in the code serves as a calibration value. If the communication employs a binary code, it can be seen by the fact that the communication is only able to be continued with either plus or minus.

Moreover, the fact that the code is binary means that it divides the world into two. The entire world can be perceived from the perspective of the code.